category/products available by zipcode

Does anyone know of a way in ZC that I can offer my products and their availability by a range of zipcodes based on the address for a registered user? I'd require all visitors to register before they could shop. Upon registration, they will only be able to purchase the products available (not already purchased) in that zipcode range. each product will have a stock quantity of 1 within this range. once someone in this zipcode range orders the product it will be unavailable to any other registered user in that zipcode range.

I'm basically wanting to sell my 10 items to X# of US regions which are based on a zipcode array. My customer will be the only owner of that product within each US Region.

Any ideas or am I looking at hard coding the ZC engine?

Make X# of zone definitions one for each region that has the states(hopefully these are on state boundaries) that are in that region You will then have to use the zone shipping module ( you can open the file and see what to change to allow X# regions) Specify in zones each region and based upon shipping address.

Now this will take care of it if and only if a buyer does not change their shipping address to another region so as to obtain that region also

First off, thanks for asking this question ameleus. I was looking for something similar.

Thanks for answering it kobra, but I'd like to add to that question, I hope that's okay.

Similar to ameleus, I'd like only US region visitors to order from certain categories. These categories are separate stores. When they log in I'd like them to see the categories within their zipcode instead of actual products. This is because I'd like them to pick a store before seeing the stores stock/products.

Is this easily achieved also or am I looking at hard coding?

Thanks :bigups:

Is this easily achieved also or am I looking at hard coding?
As this is not part of a default Zen Cart, seeing cats by region - - you will need special if/else conditionals that, depending on how you are implementing "separate stores" will determine what custom coding you will be needing

Someone who may be able to help here is Conor Kerr (conor). He wrote the RegionTables shipping module (now only commercially available from his site), but his experience in dealing with postcode matters may be valuable.

He may charge a fee, but he's worth it!

I'd like to add zips to category descriptions and just have the search function able to search categories, which then results in displaying them.

Is this still hard coding or just some tweaks to the search file?

From what I know, the search feature is already made for product search.. just want to expand it to search categories. So, I was thinking this is mainly a search function tweak.

But, I could be wrong. I'm not really familiar with the ZC System.